A selection of this year’s Christmas adverts that were good, that were maybe warm and fuzzy, but not strong enough to make the top five – in no particular order…

McDonalds

Intu

Vodafone

John Lewis

Asda

As an added bonus, this isn’t really a Christmas advert, but absolutely superb, possibly better than all of the above. Every year, when John Lewis release their Christmas advert, a man in the USA with the twitter handle @johnlewis is completely overwhelmed with responses (John Lewis’ actual twitter handles is @jlandpartners, used to be @johnlewisretail or something like that), so this year, Twitter worked with him to make this

It’s back! Advent starts tomorrow and I think all the major companies have released their Christmas adverts now, so here are my top five for this year! (Next week I’ll share five that didn’t quite make the list…)

I’d call this a fairly eclectic mix. I will put in a disclaimer early on that these are not all Christian songs – shock horror! I have put together a mixture of my absolute favourite songs that are justifiable to play at this time of year! We have Worship, Pop, Classical, Carol and Folk
What are your favourite Christmas Songs?

The People Who Walk In Darkness – Based on Isaiah 9, and just so celebratory!

Merry Christmas Everyone – I find it extremely difficult not to dance to this song!

Christmas Festival Overture – My favourite bit of this one is when Jingle Bells turns into O Come All Ye Faithful, it’s so clever!

O Come All Ye Faithful – Who doesn’t love a descant at Christmas?

Ding Dong Merrily on High – I love to just listen to the glockenspiel in this one!

I’ve been getting Advent Challenges in my inbox each morning from The Bible Society. Each day they send you three challenges to encourage you to do something for others during this season. The idea is that generally you’ll find one of them that you can manage to do.

On Wednesday 2nd December, the three options given were:

Send cards to the neighbours you don’t know – But I don’t know their names to write in them!

Join a local group or club in the new year – But I don’t have the time!

Invite a neighbour over for a cuppa – I hate tea.

So I thought to myself, you know what, I might give this one a miss, there’s many more days left this month, I can do two challenges another day and catch up.

On the Saturday, late morning, I came downstairs and opened the lounge curtains, and saw that we had a new navy blue parasol lying on the ground – t was extremely windy on Friday night! So what did I have to do? That’s right, go and knock on my neighbour’s doors to find out whose it was!

This evening I introduced my parents to the film Elf – definitely one of the best Christmas films there is – and one of them stayed awake the whole time…!

It’s such a quoteable film, I wrote down all my favourite one-liners, and bunged in a couple of YouTube clips for when you can’t explain it with words… Enjoy!

“The three rules for elves:

Treat every day like Christmas

There’s room for everyone on the nice list

The best way of spreading Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear”

“I’m a cotton headed ninny-muggins.”

“Of course you’re not an elf. You’re six-foot-three and had a beard since you were fifteen.”

“You did it, congratulations! World’s best cup of coffee! Great job everybody, it’s great to be here!”

“I’d love to ride the rest of the way up, with you but this is where my Dad works – Oh I forgot to give you a hug!”

“I’m here with my dad
And we never met
And he wants me to sing him a song
And I was adopted, but you didn’t know I was born
So I’m here now
I found you, Daddy
And guess what, I love you, I love you, I love youuuuuuuu!”

“What’s a Christmas-gram?! I want one!”

“I like to whisper too!”

“Hey! Have you seen these toilets? They’re gi-normous!”

“I just like to smile, smiling’s my favourite!”

“Santa!!!! I know him, I know him!”

“I’m singing
I’m in a store and I’m singing
I’m in a store and I’m singing!!!”

“You sit on a throne of lies”

“You smell like beef and cheese, you don’t smell like Santa”

“I thought maybe we could make ginger bread houses, and eat cookie dough, and go ice skating, and maybe even hold hands.”

“Well technically I’m a human, but I was raised by elves.”

“I passed through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“We elves try to stick to the four main food groups:

Candy

Candy Canes

Candy Corn

Syrup”

“[I slept] great! I got a full forty minutes, and even had time to make that rocking horse!”

“First we’ll make snow angels for a two hours, then we’ll go ice skating, then we’ll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookie dough as fast as we can, and then we’ll snuggle.”

“So, good news, I saw a dog today.”

“Son of a nutcracker!”

“I think you’re really beautiful and I feel really warm when I’m around you and my tongue swells up. So… do you wanna eat food?”

“That’s a nice purple dress, very purpley”

“Francisco, that’s fun to say!”

“You have such a pretty face you should be on a Christmas card!”

“Buddy the Elf, what’s your favourite colour?!”

“This place reminds me of Santa’s Workshop! Except it smells like mushrooms and everyone looks like they want to hurt me.”

“What about this: a tribe of asparagus children, but they’re self-conscious about the way their pee smells?”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”